UPDATE Ted Thompson, a 1999 Staples High School graduate, went on a whistle-stop train tour of independent bookstores in New York and Connecticut today – bypassing Westport because it has no such store – to promote his first novel, “The Land of Steady Habits,” set in a town much like Westport.

His tour began in Grand Central Terminal and continued with stops in Larchmont, N.Y., Darien, and ended in Madison. Reviews have already compared the book (Little, Brown, hardcover, $25 Little, Brown, e-book, $12.99) to Cheever and Updike in recounting the life of a suburbanite.

Author and essayist Sarah Vowell said in her blurb on Thompson’s website: “It would probably never occur to New England white people that they are an ethnicity, but this sharp and funny saga of a Connecticut family unraveling is a detailed natural history of upper crust suburbanites and how they live (and drink).

“The reader learns not to take good fortune and loved ones for granted—and also that a liquor store owner in Westport will never starve.”